“You are a most disagreeable man, Macfarlane,” Martyn said after a pause. “Here have we been thinking that we have been doing a good action, and you put us altogether out of conceit with ourselves.”
“We have been doing a good action,” the doctor said. “We have been acting according to our lights. To us it is an abominable thing that a Greek woman or child should be sold as a slave to the heathen Turk. I am only pointing out to you that from their point of view there is nothing so terrible in their lot, and that we have no reason to expect any very lively gratitude from them; and that, looking at the matter only from a material point of view, they are not likely to be benefited by the change. I know that, if I were a Greek woman, I would rather be a slave in the family of a rich Turk than working as a drudge, say, in the family of a Maltese shopkeeper, though, if I were a Scotch girl, I should certainly choose the other way.”
They all sat silent for a minute or two. The idea was a wholly new one to them, and they could not deny that, according to the point of view of these Chiot captives, it was a reasonable one. Mr. Beveridge was the first to speak.
“What you say has certainly given me a shock, doctor, but I cannot deny that there is some truth in it. Still, you know there is something beyond mere material advantages.”
“I do not deny it, sir, and, as I say, we, as Britons and Christians, feel that we are doing a good work. Still, we can hardly be surprised that these Chiots naturally view it differently. Their Christianity is, like that of all Eastern Christians, of a very debased form; and living so long among the Turks, they have no very great horror of Mohammedanism. You know, on the mainland, tens of thousands of the Albanians have become Mohammedans. We think that we are justified in inflicting what one cannot but see is, from the material point of view, a distinct injury to these people, because, as Christians, we feel it is for their moral advantage; but then, that is just the same feeling that caused the Spaniards to exterminate the natives of the West Indian Islands who declined to become Christians.”
“Oh, I say, doctor, that is too strong altogether,” Miller exclaimed indignantly.
“Well, prove it by argument,” the doctor replied calmly. “I am not saying that from our point of view we are not more than justified. I am simply explaining why these Chiots do not feel any extraordinary gratitude to us. We are benefiting them, if they did but know it. We are saving them, body and soul; but that is not the light in which they see it.”
“You are right, doctor,” Mr. Beveridge said. “And now you put it before us, I am really not surprised that these poor creatures do not feel any very lively gratitude. They are fond of ease and comfort, and have been accustomed to it, and to them the utter uncertainty of their life among strangers is not unreasonably more terrible than the prospects of an easy life as a favoured slave in a Turkish household. It is sad that it should be so; but it is human nature. Still, the consideration must not weigh with us in carrying out what we know to be a good work. We have saved in all more than three thousand souls from Turkish slavery, and can only trust that in the long run most of them will recognize the inestimable service we have rendered them.”